Lucas on His Star Wars: The Clone Wars Inspiration
New footage debuts, as Lucas talks about the series.

By Eric Goldman

April 4, 2008 - George Lucas appeared at Cartoon Network's "Upfront" presentation yesterday in New York, to promote the new Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series. Broadcastingcable.com's Alex Weprin has a detailed write up on the Q&A with Lucas, during which new footage from the series was shown.

Stylistically, Lucas said, "We really just wanted a different take on the animation, a little bit of anime, a little bit of feature animation. At the same time, when it came to Star Wars, and the look and feel of it, I did want to do something that was a little more in the realm of anime design-wise than what is now currently in television and movies, outside of Japan. I wanted to give it a look and feel of something that is so compact. We picked the Gerry Anderson Thunderbirds to be our inspiration, and you will see it has a very stylized look. I didn't want it to look like Beowulf, which we could have done, I didn't want it to look like The Incredibles, when you are doing animation, you have a cast of characters and everyone knows what they look like, you really do have to come up with a very sophisticated and dynamic caricature of those characters."

Star Wars: The Clone WarsLucas said he was very enthused by the project, according to Broadcastingcable, explaining, "I have always loved television, I loved doing the Indiana Jones Chronicles. It's a much freer form than doing a feature film. it takes you a long long time to do it, and it all comes out on one weekend, in terms of growth. Television, oddly enough, has a longer life, its repeated and repeated, and at the same time you are producing it without having to put the same amount of focus on it. Its much more like the old fashioned studio system, where you create ideas and you execute them -- and there are a lot of ideas. If you make a few mistakes or something, the end of the world isn't going to happen, you can get away with it and no one notices, because of the nature of the fact that it comes out every week, and it moves so fast. It just gives you more creative freedom, to take chances you don't have in features."

Lucas said that The Clone Wars "is Star Wars, and as a result it lands in that area where people anywhere from eight to 80 enjoys it. But in terms to where it is targeted, it is targeted to a sort of 12 year old, and with cartoons [that appeal to] 12 year olds, you need to be able to do adult humor."

Weprin described the footage shown as amazing, saying, "The animation was spectacular, the sound was brilliant. At times the animation looked exactly like the CGI effects from the Star Wars movies, but when a recognizable character appears (cough, Yoda, cough) the artistic style of the show shines through." - IGN

It looks pretty awesome. But does anyone think that Anakin's new Padawan ( Ashoka, or something? :confused:) is just going to be another annoying Jar Jar?

Oh yeah, and Grievous FTW!!

:D

Dakaruch

06-04-08, 14:45

This looks great! :D
I'm looking forward to this one!

Carbonek_0051

06-04-08, 15:25

So are they gonna disregard the other clone wars series or is this in the same time-line?

That's what I was wondering:confused:

Cochrane

06-04-08, 19:18

So are they gonna disregard the other clone wars series or is this in the same time-line?

That's what I was wondering:confused:

There's practically nothing in the Star Wars universe that has ever been fully disregarded, and I'd be rather disappointed if they started doing it now. So my money is on same time-line. I expect that it'll have a lot of overlap with the other series, but I think they won't contradict each other in large scale.

Earthcane

06-04-08, 19:22

So are they gonna disregard the other clone wars series or is this in the same time-line?

That's what I was wondering:confused:
I don't think Durge is gonna be in it, anywho.

And he was my fave character from the Clone Wars anime.
No, hang on- he was the best Bounty Hunter in the show.
Hold the phone- he was even cooler than Boba Fett....:whi:

I hope Mace gets a bigger role. He rocked in that short battle sequence with the giant crusher droid. Remember? The one that squished all the clones. Ouch.

Neteru

07-04-08, 03:58

Carbonek, please provide a link to the article from which you copied the text. Thanks.

domina

07-04-08, 04:00

I love Star Wars. I really do. But I'm getting sick of it now. The prequels were barely saved by Episode III, and any cartoon or spin-off show has been sub-par. At least the books are still decent.

Jedd Fletcher

07-04-08, 04:01

I'm very excited about the new series, because it was done mostly in Singapore and the animation style is considerably better looking than the previous one.

Carbonek_0051

07-04-08, 12:30

Carbonek, please provide a link to the article from which you copied the text. Thanks.